Top 5 Email Marketing KPIs to track in 2018

Have you ever had an email campaign flop? Chances are, we have all been there.

We try to find what went wrong with the emails, but so often the answers are not always obvious.

Was the subject line weak?

Did the email body content sound boring?

Was the email topic not relevant to the audience?

Or, did we send the emails at the wrong time when our recipients were just too busy?

Going with your gut feeling is not the way to answer these questions.

A smart marketer will always look to data. Tracking the right email marketing metrics gives you the numbers and information to make changes. After all, you cannot comment on the success of a marketing campaign if you don’t measure how well it works.

So we put together a list email marketing KPIs. These metrics work together to help you improve everything from your email design to content to communication flow.

Which Email Marketing KPIs Should You Track?

Here are five of the most dependable email marketing KPIs. Trust us; they work. They are proven to help marketers make more money with email.

Open Rates

Click Through Rates

Bounce Rates

Conversion Rates

Overall ROI

These email marketing KPIs provide you with the most reliable data. They help you get powerful insights. They guide you to make sharpened decisions. Also, they guide you to improve your results.

If a KPI does not provide the above-listed benefits for you, don’t waste money tracking them.

Let’s discuss each of these in detail. You can track these KPIs for your next email marketing campaign and let us know their benefits in the comments section. Or you can let us know any facts or advantages that we might have missed.

What are Open Rates?

Email marketing open rates measure how many recipients viewed your email. Conventional knowledge says that if an email was not opened, then your audience did not engage with the content. If recipients do not open your email, they cannot know your message or be motivated by your call to action.

Open rates vary depending on the sender and their followers. If you have a loyal following, you don’t need to have a huge email list to realize open rates as high as 5% to 10%. To start with, you can strive for a healthy open rate of 1%.

Opening an email launches the possibilities of a recipient interacting with your email and ultimately engaging with your business.

Open rates help you analyze the results. Testing different subject line titles and content can pinpoint what your audience prefers.

How to Calculate Open Rates?

Here is the simplest formula to calculate open rates:

Formula:

Open rates = (Total Emails Opened / Total Number of Emails Delivered) x 100

What Are Click Through Rates?

Click through rates or CTR is the percentage of email recipients who interact with one or more links contained in an email. Tracking CTR helps you determine the performance of an individual email. It also helps you track the campaign as a whole. It gives you direct insight into how many people on your email list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand and products.

It can also be used to calculate A/B tests results similar to open rates. It is important to note that CTR also varies by the industry.

How to Calculate Click Through Rates?

There is an ongoing conflict between the use of total clicks and unique clicks when calculating CTR. Total clicks are the total number of times an embedded link was clicked. Unique clicks are the number of subscribers clicking on the embedded links. It is necessary to observe that selecting between total clicks and unique clicks is a matter of preference. Here is the formula to calculate click through rates.

Formula:

There are tons of ways to boost click through rates, but this blog lists the top seven.

What is Bounce Rate?

As the name suggests, bounce rate is the percentage of your total emails that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

There can be three reasons behind an undelivered email:

Either the email ID is invalid, closed or non-existent

The recipient’s inbox is full

There may be an issue with the recipient’s server

In the first case, it is clear that the email will never be delivered to that email ID. Such email IDs need to be deleted or it may affect your reputation in the eyes of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In the second and third cases, chances are that your email will be delivered after the issue is solved. You can even try resending emails to such email IDs.

It is important to note that email bounce rate is altogether different from website bounce rate. Website bounce rate is the percentage of viewers who visit your website but leave without viewing other pages or performing the Call-To-Action. Where website bounce rate can be a positive metric, email bounce rate is definitely negative, and efforts must be taken to reduce it from time-to-time.

How to Calculate Bounce Rates?

Formula:

Bounce rates = (Total Number of Bounced Emails / Total Number of Emails Delivered) x 100

What Are Conversion Rates?

Clicking through to your emails is not enough. People need to take action.

The conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who complete the desired action after clicking on the embedded links of an email you send.

The desired action can vary from downloading an ebook, whitepaper or template to registering for a webinar or buying a product. Any recipient who performs this desired action is considered a conversion. The conversion rate signifies the success of an email campaign.

How to Calculate Conversion Rates?

Calculating conversion rates is the most rewarding number you can get when running an email campaign. Opening an email is easy. Anything beyond that requires interest and trust. A desirable conversion rate depicts the fact that your recipients trust you. They know what you provide is useful. Use the formula mentioned below to feel rewarded.

Formula:

Conversion rate = (Total Number of email recipients who complete the desired action / Total Number of Emails Delivered) x 100

What Is Your Overall Return on Investment?

It’s essential to calculate the revenue generated from each of your marketing efforts. It is a no-brainer that you need to know the exact revenue realized from a particular email campaign.

The overall return on investment (ROI) for your email campaigns is the total revenue divided by the total spend.

This is also a crucial metric that can determine the success of an email campaign.

How to Calculate Overall ROI?

If calculating conversion rates was rewarding then calculating overall ROI is the ultimate rush. This KPI gives you the revenue from an email campaign.

Formula:

Wrap Up

Running an email campaign is a challenging job. Like every other marketing activity, this one also needs to be recorded.

All the metrics covered in this article can be monitored using tracking platforms. Most automated email delivery platforms also offer tracking features. Let us know about your email marketing success stories in the comments section below. Happy emailing to you!

[…] Every sales or marketing activity can have a different set of KPIs. There are possibilities that certain KPIs might have to be measured on different terms. Same is the case with email marketing campaigns. So we have compiled a list of KPIs to be tracked for your email marketing campaigns. Read about them here- Top 5 Email Marketing KPIs to track in 2018 […]

[…] These stats were produced by people who have been tracking their email marketing campaign’s performance. Are you tracking your campaigns? And if you are, are you tracking the right metrics? To know more about email marketing KPIs, read this. […]